Dr. Mary Phillips trained in medicine at the University of Cambridge in the UK and in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry in London. She received a research training fellowship from the Medical Research Council in the UK to examine visual scan paths in schizophrenia. She subsequently developed an interest in the application of fMRI techniques to examine the neural basis of emotion processing in healthy and psychiatric populations. Her research focuses on the identification of neural correlates that underlie the symptoms of specific abnormalities in emotion processing in people with mood disorders. Some of the goals of the Phillips Mood and Brain Lab can be found at this link.

She became Professor of Neuroscience and Emotion and Head of the Section of Neuroscience and Emotion within the Department of Psychiatry, Division of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry at the Kings College in London, UK, in 2003.

In October 2004 she joined the Department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh as part-time Visiting Professor and Director of the Clinical and Translational Affective Neuroscience Program. In 2005, Dr. Phillips became a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) and in 2006, was awarded the Nellie Blumenthal Investigator by the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression. She became Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in April, 2006. In 2014, she was named Pittsburgh Foundation-Emmerling Endowed Chair in Psychotic Disorders in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Phillips also became a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2014 and received the Joel Elkes Research Prize from the ACNP that year as well. In 2016, she was elected to the Scientific Council of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (formerly NARSAD) and in October of 2017, received the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation’s Colvin Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Mood Disorders Research.

She has received grant funding from the Medical Research Council (UK), the Wellcome Trust (UK), and the National Institute of Mental Health (US). She has served as a mentor to more than 60 junior investigators in the US and UK and has authored or co-authored more than 300 publications.